Project Description
The purpose of this project was to design a hovercraft and a controller that communicate wirelessly using a class-wide communication protocol to heard smaller hovercrafts to one side of the gameboard. The hovercraft, called a DOG (Device Of Guidance), is a remote controlled vehicle that floats above the ground from a lift fan and moves forward, left, and right via two thruster fans. The DOG is controlled by a FARMER (Floating Animal Rescue Mechano-Electrical Remote), which is a remote with various inputs for the user to direct the DOG. The gameboard is a fenced-in area with an opening at one end. This area is where the DOGs need to heard the smaller hovercrafts, called FERRETs (Frenzied,Erratic, Random, Ruckus Exciting Tormentaors). Three DOGs participate at one time and the purpose of the game is to heard as many FERRETs into the end zone opening as possible.
Our DOG: a hovercraft with two thruster fans and one lift fan. LEDs and the bunny's ear were used to indicate paring with farmer
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Our FARMER: a spoon for throttle, bunny ears for turning, a tail for the peripheral and a fanny pack for DOG selection
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Communication Protocol
The communication protocol was created by a committee of students in the class, one from each team, called the COVENANT (Communications Oligarchy for Virtual Electronic Network for Asynchronous Network Things). The protocol they designed is for asynchronous serial communication between an XBee wireless radio transceiver and a microcontroller (in our case, a TI Tiva). The packets of data sent to and from the XBee have some structure to them, but the designed protocol gives structure within the "data" portion of the packets sent between the XBee transceiver and the microcontroller. For further details on the communications protocol, see the document below.
